Put The Returned in Your Halloween Basket

If you knew about life only from television, you might think the world’s fastest growing demographic is the undead. Our airwaves are just teeming with truly bloody vampires, deadly walking zombies, and now, in the moody, enigmatic French series The Returned, we’ve even got the resurrected—who may be the most fascinating branch of the whole living-dead family.

Set in a small mountainous city in Haute-Savoie, the action begins when a teenage girl, Camille (Yara Pilartz), who was killed in a bus accident, suddenly turns up at her home unaware that she’s been dead for four years, shocking the heck out of her mother (Anne Consigny), her father (Frédéric Pierrot), and especially her identical twin sister, Léna (Jenna Thiam), who’s continued to grow. And Camille’s just the beginning. Soon we meet several other returnees, including Simon (Pierre Perrier) whose ex-fiancée (Clotilde Hesme) is now a mother living with a stolid cop (Samir Guesmi); an eerie-cute orphan named Victor (Swann Nambotin), who is harbored by a lesbian nurse (crazy-brilliant Céline Sallette); and Serge (Guillaume Gouix), the violent brother of the local barkeep (Grégory Gadebois), who’s not exactly thrilled to see him. As if this wasn’t enough for the local citizenry to deal with, there’s also a killer on the prowl and apocalyptic doings at a nearby dam. I won’t say more, for I’d hate to spoil the nifty storytelling, which reveals hidden connections between its various characters and ends each episode with a sly twist.

Adapted by Fabrice Gobert from a a middling 2004 film, Les Revenants,The Returned creates an unsettling world in which nature itself is flipping out, yet it never falls into the claptrap spookiness that makes most supernatural stories feel cheap, even hokey. A slow burn rather than a potboiler, the series is about something quite interesting: how both the living and the dead cope with resurrection. Steeped in psychological realism, it’s a showcase for the naturalistic acting that’s a glory of French culture. Even as the series is a launching-pad for young actors like Thiam and Perrier—he’s unreadably handsome, she’s got a sulky beauty—its emotional richness comes from familiar French faces like Consigny, Pierrot, Hesme, Guesmi, and Sallette, crack professionals who invest even the craziest scenes with utter emotional conviction.

In Javier Marías’s recent novel, The Infatuations, there’s a brilliant riff on how awkward it would be if the dead people we wish we could see again actually came back to life. The Returned pursues this idea with an intelligence and flair that makes it my favorite new show of the entire fall season. And clearly I’m not the only one who’s hooked—A&E’s already working on the American remake.

The Returned premieres on the Sundance Channel on Thursday, October 31 at 9 p.m. EST